


This Ruined Puzzle

by aguantare



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Angst, Family, Future Fic, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aguantare/pseuds/aguantare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nora stared at her dad, feeling like she was seeing him for the first time. True, he didn’t come to many of her matches and he went to most, if not all of Leo’s, and he didn’t talk much about her in interviews, while he talked plenty about Leo, but she hadn’t ever thought it was like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Ruined Puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> Football and gender and sexual orientation, oh my. An intersection that is near and dear to my heart for a variety of reasons. Desperately difficult to write, I think, but important. Feedback is love. <3
> 
> Disclaimer: don't know them, don't own them, don't sue me
> 
> Update 11/11/2017: Sequel - [Dare You to Move](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12692070)

Leo calls on a brutally hot August afternoon in Los Angeles, just after Nora’s come back from a run. She pulls her earbuds out and unlocks her phone with a quick swipe, hits the answer key and then the speaker button. 

“Hey bro,” she says in English.  


“Hey,” Leo responds cheerfully, “How are you?”  


“Just popped off a five-mile run,” Nora says in Spanish, toeing off her running shoes and kicking them in the general direction of her closet. Thank god she has a single room this year, she thinks, grimacing a little at the state of her closet and dresser collectively.  


“Gross,” Leo observes, “You midfielders are so weird.”  


“You strikers are so lazy,” Nora retorts.  


“Ouch,” Leo says, pretending to sound wounded.  


“Sorry,” Nora replies.  


“No you’re not.”  


“You’re right, I’m not.”  


Leo laughs and Nora tosses herself down on her bed, imagines Leo is doing the same in his flat in Madrid.  


“So we’re going to be in Los Angeles for pre-season in a few weeks,” Leo says, “Can you pencil me in?”  


“Mm, I don’t know, I’m pretty popular,” Nora teases.  


“Yeah right, popular with your football and your biology books, more like,” Leo responds.  


“Pot, kettle?” Nora retorts, “What’d you spend last Friday night doing?”  


“…I might have been out. You don’t know that I wasn’t.”  


“On the contrary, dear little brother.”  


“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Don’t I get a bump up on your agenda for being, you know, related to you?”  


Nora makes a loudly disgruntled noise as she gets up and walks across her room to her corkboard to check the training schedule.  


“When are you coming out?” she asks.  


“The 12th through the 15th,” Leo replies, “Friendly with the Galaxy on the 13th, so the 14th or 15th would be best.”  


"Mm…” Nora runs her finger down the list of dates, “Our two-a-days start on the 10th, so it’d have to be a late dinner, probably.”  


“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll text you when we get in.”  


“Cool.”  


“And hey, Nora?”  


“Yeah?”  


“Just so you know, Dad’s flying out. He’s staying in Pasadena.”  


-  


Under the blonde hair, Lexie Gerrard is the spitting image of her father. Put a Liverpool shirt on her, Nora thinks, and she’d fit right in on the pitch at Anfield. As it is, she wore the Gerrard name proudly on her back during her career at USC, and continues to do so now with Seattle. There are rumbles, too, Nora knows, that she could be called up for England for the next Women’s World Cup. 

They’re sitting at a Starbucks on Sunset Boulevard, just off the UCLA campus, watching cars cruise by and sipping on stupidly sweet, overpriced coffee drinks, for all intents and purposes just two students enjoying the evening air. Nora imagines a few people might do a double take if they knew who she and Lexie actually are. 

“So when was the last time you talked to him?” Lexie still has hints of a Scouse accent underneath her otherwise American English, and Nora’s heard how it gets stronger when she’s on the phone with her parents. She envies that, somehow.

“When I came over here freshman year,” she replies after a short pause, “Barely counted as talking, though.”

“Has he ever apologized?” Lexie asks. 

“No,” Nora replies tersely.

Lexie hums an acknowledgment. 

“Are you thinking of meeting him while he’s in town?” she queries. 

“No,” Nora answers. She pauses. “Maybe. I don’t know. He’ll probably be too busy with Leo and his team anyways.”

Lexie winces sympathetically.

“Sort of makes me feel lucky I only have sisters,” she observes. Nora shrugs. 

“Leo’s awesome,” she says, and she means it, “I don’t expect him to like, give up all my dad’s connections for me or whatever. He deserves to get those chances.”

Lexie eyes Nora carefully. Nora wonders if Stevie’s coached her on that incisive gaze that makes you want to tell her everything, or if it just runs in the family. 

“So do you,” Lexie says. 

Nora shrugs again.

“He made it clear that there was only one Torres he wanted following in his footsteps.” 

-

If anyone bothered to look at Rayo Vallecano’s women’s matchday programs from 4 years ago, they would see that a midfielder named Nora Torres had worn #8 for the women’s first team and started four games in the first half of the season. 

Then they would see that a midfielder named Nora Liste donned #2 and started every game for Rayo in the second half of the season. 

A savvy outsider might have noticed the change, and guessed, correctly, that they were one and the same. A really savvy outsider might have even guessed that Fernando Torres’ daughter had changed her name to try and separate herself from her father’s legacy. 

But that would only be half the story.

-

The fight was short and brutal. Nora was 17 and standing there in the kitchen with a contract offer from Atletico, and she had thought her dad would be so happy, to have both her and Leo at his club, at the one that he—that they all—loved so dearly. But he wasn’t.

“Why don’t you stay at Rayo?” he asked. Nora looked at him for a good five seconds or so, trying to decide if that was a real question or not.

“Uh, because it’s Atleti?” she asked in reply, “Because they’ve won the league three times in a row and Rayo are facing relegation?”

Leo walked in and headed for the fridge just as Fernando said,

“The women’s league, you mean.” 

Nora looked at him for another five seconds. Leo was studiously pouring a glass of orange juice at the island. 

“Are you fucking kidding me,” she said eventually.

“Don’t curse at me, Nora.”

“Then don’t say shit like that!”

“ _Nora_.” 

But it was like a dam had broken, a dam Nora had been dimly aware of for some time now, but hadn’t realized how close to failure it was.

“Why are you not even happy about this?” she asked, “Why are you—when Leo got his youth contract we had a big dinner for him and—“

“That was different,” Fernando interrupted.

“How so?” Nora demanded.

“Youth contracts, they lead to careers,” Fernando responded.

“So does mine.”

“Women’s football isn’t a career,” Fernando snapped, suddenly harsh, “It’s a side job.”

Nora felt like she’d been slapped.

“Jeez, Dad,” Leo spoke up then, looking first at Nora, then at Fernando, “Kind of uncalled for.” 

Nora stared at her dad, feeling like she was seeing him for the first time. True, he didn’t come to many of her matches and he went to most, if not all of Leo’s, and he didn’t talk much about her in interviews, while he talked plenty about Leo, but she hadn’t ever thought it was like this. 

“So what, I’d taint Atleti with my girly mediocrity?” she said, finding her voice again. 

“No,” Fernando replied, his voice low, “But I don’t want people going around saying my daughter is a--” he cut himself off. For a second, Nora was confused, but then it hit her, a sucker punch to the gut. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leo’s eyes go wide. 

“Dad—“ Leo started, his tone disbelieving. Nora cut him off, flooded with anger.

“No, go on, say it,” she snapped, “You don’t want people saying I’m a what?”

Fernando didn’t answer. Nora could see on his face that he knew he had messed up, but she didn’t really care. 

“You don’t want people saying I’m a dyke, right?” she spat, “Yeah, wow, people I don’t give a fuck about might think I like women because shock, horror, I play high-level football. And so what if I did? Don’t want your dyke daughter playing for your precious club, is that it?”

“Reputation is important, Nora.”

“Your reputation, you mean, and his,” Nora jerked a thumb at Leo, who flinched a little.

“Come on, Nora,” he said, “You know I don’t give a fuck.”

“Yeah, but you do, don’t you, Dad?” she snapped. 

His silence cut through her in a way no words ever could have. 

-

There’s a text waiting on Nora’s phone after their final practice of the first week of pre-season training. It’s from Leo.

 _Just landed at LAX_ , he writes, _call when you’re done w training._

Nora hits the dial button and puts the call on speaker so she can sit down and unlace her boots. Leo picks up on the third ring. 

“Just leaving training,” she tells him, “Where are you staying? I’ll come meet you.”

“We’re actually just up the road from you,” Leo responds, “At the Hilton. We have a training session tomorrow morning in your stadium and then we go down to a place near the Galaxy’s stadium.”

“Ooh, fancy,” Nora comments, “Amy said I could borrow her car, so I can come get you and we can go to dinner somewhere close.”

“Can we do Thai food again, please?” Leo asks, “That place near your old dorm was fucking amazing.”

Nora laughs. Leo might be Atleti’s next great generational striker, but he’s still a kid at heart, still her little brother.

“Is that allowed?” she asks, only half in jest.

“Not strictly speaking,” Leo replies, “But what Gabi doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Gabi would probably let you get away with it anyways, just because you’re a Torres,” Nora points out. 

“Yeah, maybe,” Leo replies, and Nora can practically hear his grin through the phone, “So, 8:30?”

“How Spanish of you,” Nora quips, “Works for me. I’ll text you when I get there.”

“Cool. See you soon.”

-

Leo hangs up the call, tosses his phone onto his hotel bed. Looks up at his dad, sitting in a chair by the window. 

“Nora?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Leo replies, “We’re going out for dinner.”

“How did she sound?” 

“Dad.” Leo stuffs his hands in his pockets, looks down at his feet for a second. “We talked about this. I’m not playing messenger for you.”

Fernando purses his lips, inhales sharply and lets the breath out slowly.

“You’re right,” he says, “I’m sorry.” He gets to his feet, checks his pockets, then walks across the room. There’s just a hint of a limp in his gait, and Leo knows it means his knee is bothering him again. 

“I’ll see you once you guys get down to the stadium,” he tells Leo, “Gabi wants to talk about some board room stuff.”

“Gabi hates board room stuff,” Leo observes. It’s a bit weird still, to think of Gabi as his coach and manager, when he knew him first and foremost as a family friend, someone he grew up calling ‘tío.’ 

“He probably just wants to vent,” he adds. 

Fernando cracks a half-smile.

“Probably,” he allows, “But what else are old teammates for?”

He wraps an arm around Leo’s shoulders, kisses his forehead, and leaves.

-

Nora gets to the Hilton in Beverly Hills a few minutes early. Pulls into a spot near the front door to wait. Just as the dashboard clock hits 8:30 and she pulls out her phone to text Leo, she sees the front door open and a figure she’d know just about anywhere walks out. It doesn’t escape her notice that he’s limping, just a little. She resists the urge to slouch down or turn away as he walks past the front bumper of the car, wonders what he’ll do if he looks up and sees her. He doesn’t though; he’s on his phone, and Nora lets out a breath she didn’t even realize she was holding.

-

“Have you talked to her?”

“No. I know Lex talks to her a lot though. They played against each other a few times.”

“Have you…have you seen her play?”

“Yeah.”

“How. Is she good?”

“Nando, come on, what good is this doing?”

“Just, please, Stevie.”

“…she’s fucking amazing, Nando. Hell of a midfielder, and I’m not just saying that because she’s your daughter. She’s really, really good.”

“…yeah.”

“Nando. You need to talk to her.”

“…I know.”

“Does Leo know?”

“I never told him.”

“But do you think he knows?”

“Maybe.”

“Alright. You still coming by for dinner tomorrow night?”

“Definitely.”

-

“Did you see Porto tried to get in on the Díaz deal at the last minute?”

“Oh, I bet Real were thrilled about that.”

“Yeah, it cost them an extra 500,000 euros in the end.”

Talking football with Leo is wonderful. Nora loves her UCLA teammates, they’re some of the best players she’s ever played with, but a lot of them prefer to keep the shop talk limited to the locker room and training pitch. Leo’s maybe the only person in the world other than Lexie that will ruminate over tactics and formations and transfers and league standings with her for hours on end and not get bored or try to change the subject. 

“You know there’s a rumor running around that Chelsea are going to bid on Valente?”

“I bet that’s just because they want Bayern to lower their price on Meier.”

“Meier would just sit on the bench at Chelsea. He should stay.”

Nora balls up her napkin, throws it at Leo’s head, for no particular reason. He clicks his tongue at her, steals a forkful of noodles off her plate in retaliation. 

“How’s preseason?” he asks.

“Good,” Nora replies, “I mean, it sucks. But it’s good.”

“Yeah,” Leo says with a laugh, “I get it.”

Nora watches him for a moment or two, debating briefly with herself. A waitress passes by, refills their water. Nora takes a long drink, even though she’s not that thirsty.

“How’s Dad?” she asks, before she can think about it any longer.

Leo goes kind of still, no doubt surprised by the question. They haven’t talked about this, directly, in almost three years.

“Why do you ask?”

Nora shrugs.

Leo sighs, leans back in his seat and looks up at the sky for a few seconds.

“Do you think he loved Mom?” he asks, looking back down. 

“Well, he married her, didn’t he?” Nora replies, “And had 3 kids with her.”

“And then got divorced.”

“Yeah.”

Leo worries his lower lip between his teeth for a moment.

“I think…” He stops, presses his lips together, then continues, “Sometimes I think he married her because he hoped he’d fall in love with her.”

“What do you mean?”

Leo sets his elbows on the table.

“So…a couple months ago, I asked him for advice on like, a girl thing—shut up, Nora—“

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You smirked.”

“I’m your big sister. It’s my prerogative.” Nora holds out a hand. “Please, continue.” Leo rolls his eyes at her.

“So I asked his advice, and right at the end he said, ‘Just make sure whoever you end up with is understanding, because football doesn’t always leave you much space to be yourself.’”

Leo pauses. 

“It just makes me wonder, you know,” he continues, “Like, if he thought he could have been himself while he was still playing, who he would have wanted to be with.”

“’Who’ as in a person, or ‘who’ as in gender?” Nora asks. Leo shrugs.

“Either,” he replies, “Both, maybe.”

He sighs again, rests his chin in one hand. 

“None of it makes it okay, what he said to you,” he says, “But looking back on it, I feel like it says a lot more about how he felt about himself than how he felt about you.”

Nora eyes him for a long moment.

“So you think I should talk to him. Try and forgive him.”

Leo gives her a Look.

“Nora, I know way, way better than to try and tell you what to do.”

Nora half-smiles at that, tells him he’s a good younger sibling, for being a boy, that is. 

-

Before she and Leo part ways, Nora gets her dad’s phone number from her brother. When she gets back to her dorm, she pulls up the number on her phone, stares at the screen for a long time. 

Even now, it still makes her angry to think about that fight, about her dad’s dismissiveness and all the things he left unsaid, which somehow made it even worse, that he hadn’t even had the guts to say things to her face. 

But at the same time, it makes her sad now, too. She doesn’t think Leo is wrong, and she cringes a little when she thinks about how her own words at the time must have been a special kind of hurtful. Of course her dad had given a fuck what other people thought about him; he was afraid, rationally or not, of what they might do to him if they found out the truth. 

Nora hovers her finger over the call button. Tries to imagine in her mind what she’ll say, what a conversation with her dad will even be like after four years of silence. 

After ten seconds or so, she closes the screen out and sets her phone on her desk. Goes to bed. 

A few days later, Atletico leave Los Angeles, headed to Chicago and then on to the East Coast, and Fernando goes back to Spain.

-

North Carolina come to UCLA in mid-September. Standing on the pitch just before kick-off, Nora adjusts the captain’s armband on her bicep, then crouches down and says a quick prayer for calm, for strength, and for an injury-free match. 

The whistle blows. 

-

UNC hit the post twice inside the first ten minutes and force a good save out of their keeper at minute 12. Nora’s never been much of a yeller, but she does bark at her center backs after the save, tells them to calm down and play smarter. 

The corner whips in and pings off a couple heads, bounces to the edge of the 18 yard box. It sits up perfectly for a UNC player to half-volley it, but Nora’s already moving, throws herself into the path of the shot, arms tucked into her torso to avoid a handball call. As it is, the ball cannons off the side of her face instead, and there’s a collective “ooh” from the stands. It stings, but when the coach asks from the sideline if she’s okay, Nora swipes a hand over her face, doesn’t see any blood, and gives him a thumbs up. 

-

At eighty eight minutes, the score is still 0-0. Nora can feel the fatigue—it’s still early in the season, and none of them are fully fit yet—but they’re still pushing hard, and UNC are starting to drop off, giving her space in the midfield that wasn’t there before. 

Her outside mid slots a pass into Nora’s feet, neatly splitting two UNC players and allowing Nora to turn quickly away from an onrushing defender. She gladly takes the space she’s given, pushes hard into the UNC half. There’s plenty of movement in front of her, but nothing is opening up. She sidesteps another defender, gets her eyes up in time to see the streaking white jersey about to cut in behind the defense. She plays the pass in, with just a little bit of curve on it to take it around the UNC defender’s outstretched foot. Her striker runs onto it and Nora raises a hand in the air, one finger pointing skyward because she already knows, and a second later, the rippling net serves as confirmation.

-

They have a water fight after the match to celebrate. Nora’s still squeezing water out of her ponytail as she walks off the field, tired, but satisfied. She’s reaching into her bag for her phone when someone calls her name with a Spanish accent. She stops, turns around, and there, standing less than ten feet away, is her dad. Maybe it’s the post-game high, or maybe it’s just that even after everything, he’s still her dad, still familiar and familial, but she doesn’t feel unsettled seeing him there.

“Hi,” she says, neutral. 

“Hey,” he replies, moving a few paces closer until they’re within arms’ reach. Still limping, Nora notes. Another price he paid, she thinks, for the game he loved. 

“Did you come to watch the game?” Nora asks, realizing they’re still inside the stadium. 

“Yeah,” Fernando says with a nod, “You played…really well. Amazing, actually.”

Nora swallows over a sudden, inexplicable tightness in her throat. 

“Thanks,” she says, tightening her grip on the strap of her bag. 

“I uhm.” Fernando looks away for a second or two. “I figured that…I missed so many of your games, for so long, I have a lot of catching up to do.” There’s a strain in his voice that Nora refuses to think about, because if he cries, she’ll be fucking done and she knows it. 

“I think we both have a lot of catching up to do,” she says, trying, and mostly succeeding, in keeping her voice level. 

“Yeah.” Fernando tucks his hands in his pockets. “Can I. Can I drive you home?”

Nora only hesitates for a second. 

“Yeah,” she says, “Okay.”


End file.
